A delicate dressing gown of fine cotton mull and bobbin lace is our feature for Object of the Month this April—or, as one writer in the Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine put it, “a tasteful breakfast dress” (April 1, 1879).
At the beginning of a day that frequently required several time- and occasion-specific toilettes, an affluent Victorian woman often donned a comfortable yet elegant dressing gown that varied in its fabric and color depending on the season. By the last quarter of the nineteenth century, this type of at-home attire could be custom-ordered from a high-end dressmaking establishment, acquired ready-made from one of the large department stores that burgeoned during this period, or sewed from a pattern available from one of the many fashion magazines.
Worn in America and dating to about 1879, this airy white cotton dressing gown with graduated bands of fine pintucking, bobbin lace insertions, and lace ruffles was intended for the warm summer months. Its frothy appearance reflects an affinity with women’s undergarments and reinforces the delicate femininity expected of a woman of leisure. In its “New York Fashions” column of August 13, 1881, Harper’s Bazar observed that “…a lady is left to herself in choosing and enjoying the daintiness of her… room wrappers [that] come in the most temptingly crisp percales, batistes, muslins, etc., with quantities of lace in frills, flounces, insertions, jabots, and robings.” The dressing gown’s long, curved seams that extend from shoulder to mid-thigh accentuating the female form are typical of the “princess”-line construction that dominated fashionable dress from about 1876 to 1882. In June 1877, Harper’s Bazar noted that the shaped waist of stylish princess wrappers “render[s] unnecessary the belt formerly used to adjust the slovenly fit of looser garments.” Here, a silk ribbon stitched to the inside of the waist would have secured the gown to the wearer’s figure, and a pair of linen ties at either side of the lower skirt would have pulled in the fullness of the train—a feature that, according to the magazine in 1881, distinguished the “regular morning wrapper or robe de chambre” from other morning and street costumes.
Around 1880, the tea gown—a close, more elaborate relative of the morning gown and wrapper—became increasingly acceptable for women to wear in mixed society in the confines of their homes. The trend that originated in England and France was initially deemed outré for American woman by Harper’s Bazar. In April 1881, the fashion editor was firm in her disapproval of “the négligé of the English tea gown, which is rather the style of the ‘fast’ set in England…it still remains a peignoir, and it is doubted if it is ever proper out of the dressing room.” The following spring, the magazine featured a dedicated report on the newest “tea gowns.”
Illustrations of a wrapper and a morning gown, Harper’s Bazar, September 2, 1882.
Dressing gown of cotton, probably American, ca. 1879.
